March 01, 2006

More is Less

Time and again over the past 10 years, the Moscow city government has made bold promises about hotel expansion plans for the capital. Yet actions speak louder than

words, indicating where priorities are focused. Mid-class, centrally-located, Soviet-era hotels (Minsk, Intourist, Moskva, Rossiya) have fallen one by one, while new hotels opened in the downtown have been almost exclusively four- and five-star offerings, with nightly rates hovering around $300.

Certainly, there are exceptions. Small business class hotels like Katerina, East-West, Sretenskaya and Tatyana offer somewhat more reasonable rates ($200 a night and under). And there are still a few inexpensive (approximately $100 a night), Soviet-era hotels (Sovietskaya, Cosmos, Izmailovo, Ukraine, Belgrade) that offer that indescribable flavor of days done by.